What happened during the meeting between Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Donald Trump?

Meeting at the White House came at a precarious time for the company

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and US President Donald Trump. AFP

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang's meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington focused on the importance of strengthening US technology and AI leadership, the company has said.

“We appreciated the opportunity to meet President Trump and discuss semiconductors and AI [artificial intelligence] policy,” said an Nvidia representative.

The meeting late last week was greatly anticipated but was largely overshadowed by a blitz of news from the Trump administration as it threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and as it sought to blame hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration after a passenger plane collided with a military helicopter.

The issues covered in the meeting have been a cause for speculation due to a falling-out between Nvidia and former president Joe Biden shortly before his term came to an end.

“In its last days in office, the Biden administration seeks to undermine America’s leadership with a 200-plus-page regulatory morass, drafted in secret and without proper legislative review,” read a statement from Ned Finkle, vice president of government affairs at Nvidia, released days before Mr Trump was sworn in on January 20.

The statement came after the Biden administration announced an “interim final rule on artificial intelligence diffusion” that it said would help to thwart smuggling, close loopholes and raise AI security standards.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang. AFP

The rule was also widely seen as a way to maintain a competitive edge over China in the increasingly important AI space.

Yet Nvidia appeared to interpret the rule as an obstacle to the selling of graphics processing units (GPUs), which has been central to the company's rapid rise in recent years.

“The Biden administration now seeks to restrict access to mainstream computing applications with its unprecedented and misguided 'AI Diffusion' rule, which threatens to derail innovation and economic growth worldwide,” Mr Finkle's statement said.

On Mr Huang's recent meeting at the White House, a source at Nvidia told The National that it was not a surprise that the Biden administration's much-discussed AI diffusion rule has not been reversed during Mr Trump's first few weeks in the White House.

“It's an interim final rule so it's a little bit different, and they technically don't have a commerce secretary yet,” the Nvidia source said.

Mr Trump's nominee for commerce secretary, billionaire investor Howard Lutnick, was also present during the meeting on Friday with Mr Huang.

Mr Huang's White House trip came at a particularly precarious time for Nvidia. The rapid rise of a China-based AI platform and company, DeepSeek, has raised questions about Nvidia's business model.

DeepSeek claims to have created an AI platform that rivals OpenAI's ChatGPT, while using far less computing power in the form of GPUs.

Although some technology experts have questioned the validity of those claims, DeepSeek's stratospheric rise jolted Wall Street, Nvidia included, because of fears that once ironclad GPU sales might be vulnerable.

But DeepSeek has come under criticism from OpenAI, which has accused the company of stealing data. The claims come after Chinese-owned TikTok was temporarily banned in the US last month after Congress passed legislation demanding the company be handed over to a different owner.